The Valerian comic books are available on Culturethèque!
Written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, this space opera tells the adventures of two agents of the “Human Police Forces” (HPF), Valerian and his friend Laureline, at Galaxity: a megalopolis of the planet Earth and capital city of a galactic empire during the 28th century. The agents of the HPF are travelling through time and space to preserve the interests of Galaxity. The rules are forbidding them to change the events of the past. Valerian and Laureline explore new planets, take part to historical experiences, help unknown populations, solve planetary conflicts. In 1986, they do not warn the people of the nuclear explosion that transformed the aspect and organisation of the Earth, which would then become one of the greatest cosmic powers after a difficult period.
This comics series, first published in the magazine “Pilote” in 1967, and then by Dargaud in 1970, was a source of inspiration for all Science-fiction works that followed, among which a lot of TV shows and films, like Star Wars. This first film adaptation is a way to loop the loop.
The movie “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” has taking its title from the second volume of the saga “Empire of a Thousand Planets” (available on Culturethèque). Written and directed by Luc Besson (The Big Blue, The Fifth Element, Leon), the film stars with Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne (as Valerian and Laureline), but also with Ethan Hawke, Rihanna and Clive Owen. 2h16 – the 28th of July in Estonia.
THE VOLUMES AVAILABLE ON CULTURETHEQUE:
VOLUME 1 – The City of Shifting Waters
Xombul has escaped from jail and stole a spatiotemporal spaceship. He has been located in New York in 1986, when everything was falling apart in the World: a cataclysm, the explosion of a dump of H bombs in the Arctic, which has changed completely the climate on Earth. Valerian then decides to look for Xombul in order to arrest him.
VOLUME 2 – Empire of a Thousand Planets
Valerian and Laureline are approaching the the planet “Syrte-the-Magnificent”, capital of the Empire of a Thousand Planets. Their mission is to know whether this Empire is a threat for the Earth. The two heroes are quickly hunted by the mysterious “Soothsayers”…
VOLUME 3 – World Without Stars
In a system of four planets, Valerian and Laureline are traveling from one world to the other to congratulate the colonists who have just settled. But they discover that the entire colony is about to collide with a wandering planet, which is moving with an incredible speed in the space. By getting closer, they realise that it is a hollow planet which nucleus is providing light like a sun.
VOLUME 4 – Welcome to Alflolol
During a tour inspection on a Earth colony called Alflolol, Valerian and Laureline meet the natural inhabitants of the place who have left the planet for 4000 years before coming back not long ago. Unfortunately, they discovered that there are now human settlers where they used to live. It is the beginning of a confrontation between the disorder particular to the Alflololians and the efficiency of the Governor of the Earth.
VOLUME 5 – Birds of the Master
The astroship of the spatio-temporal agent Valerian and the young Laureline crashes on an unknown planet. The two agents are made prisoners but they discover that the people of this planet is starving and is enslaved by a mysterious entity called “the Master”. Everyone here is forced to work to the point of exhaustion, under the threat of dreadful birds, whose bite causes madness…